Title: STREET OF DREAMS
Author: by R.Schultz (cousindream@aol.com)
Series: VOY
Pairing Code: J/T/7/and etc.
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: The Trek Universe belongs to Paramount/ViaBorgCom. This is for fun, not money. Will use and put back. Story is mine under common-law copyright. June, 2001, 10,200 words long.
Summary: Janeway is not enjoying marriage to Mark, her desk job at StarFleet, her pregnancy, his cheating on her, or her regrets.
Warning: Love between (fictional) adult consenting women is part of this story. If this makes your photon torpedoes fizzle, why not go somewhere else? Under USA law no underage humanoids allowed here. Those living in nations or locales which disapprove of TrekSmut must leave. Vamoose! Go read something else.
And no bad-mouthing your government. Your government is very, very, very, very, very, very wise and knows exactly what you should or shouldn't read, and lots more, besides. That's why they're in positions of power. Not because of their own wish for power, or a desire to control other people, but because of their great wisdom. You can ask them yourself, if you don't believe me.
Posted to the Femme_Fuhq_Fest group, later to the ASCEM. May be archived, but please notify.
Comments to: cousindream@aol.com
by R.Schultz
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ohhhh, damn, just... Oh here it is. The slope is under me now, I'm crashing down. My skin feels all prickly now, I know I'm juicing now, I always do when I come. I force one hand under my breast, pinching it, making it spark and fire in my come. Oh my, this is ... This is ... Good. Even the Admiral's pounding was making it good, because every time his belly hits my ass, it stretches my clit on the edge of this desk.
After a few moments I can feel the warmth inside as the Admiral shoots his wad inside me. He is spastic now, irregular. I look back over my shoulder, enjoying the hopeless fish out of water look he has.
That feeling of momentary satisfaction is the only power many woman have, I know. Which is a hell of a note.
After that it's a few caresses, some kissing, the recovery of clothes and respectability, touchings and a few promises. I release the privacy lock on the door, and we return to everyday.
Kyle Riker is unlike some, he has a hint of true class to him. Instead of bustling off once his gonads had emptied, he deliberately sat down next to me and talked. Just talked. He brought up a cup of Raktajino and I had a nice Ugandan. Anyone coming into the office would have seen nothing but calm innocence.
I told him there hadn't been any more attacks of morning sickness for three weeks. I didn't tell him Mark had run a DNA check to make sure the boy was his.
My office had it's usual share of casual visitors coming for their usual slips authorized or slips incoming. From Kyle I had a little gossip, a little speculation, some more bad news from the Dominion Front, and the possibility he might get a four-day to McKinley for some skiing. He had some news of his son Will, but it was off of an old letter. Will was as well as can be expected, he said.
The courier came by with the Two O'clock Eyes Only papers and memoranda, and he left.
Paperwork comprised the rest of the afternoon, even if little of it was actually printed out. Boring, boring, boring,
Mark answered the second call I made to him, and he said he'd be late with work again. The War, of course. Like I wasn't aware of the war, since my department was busy making sure Utopia was producing a new Cruiser or Fleet-class Warship every seven days. By the end of the year it'll be six. It'd really help if we could complete a new Constellation-class in less than twenty-one days.
The new class of Triad Tug systems seemed to be perfect for the job of pulling in metal asteroids for cutting up into usable raw material. I'd seen a recent evaluation HoloVid, and they were beautiful. In one scene their roaring motors were mere points of light against the mega-tonne mountains they brought to the LaGrange satellite factories. Yet I couldn't help feeling nostalgic. The Asteroiders were the last of a breed, and now they were .... institutionalized into another mere occupation.
And out my office door and down two opposite, they were helping produce 4,200 new Lower Decks personnel every ten days, here on Terra. Next month it'll be 5,100.
Like we need reminders there's a war on.
In Mark's War a certain Arab girl named Rayya figured larger than the depredations of the Jem'Hadar. For the fiftieth time I thought about .... throwing a scene. Ranging from putting a slug-thrower bullet through his ass on the upswing to breaking down in his office and demanding he choose me or her.
No winner there. He'd choose me, be contrite, and have a new girlfriend in a month.
And my revenge was named Kyle Riker. I felt so useless.
At last! End of shift, out the door, time to choose a restaurant to linger in before turning home. My empty home. And I wondered if it'd really be better when Little Lucas was screaming for attention.
Definitely not. Mark has been assuming I'd be a nice little Traditionalist Mommy and stay home with the kiddy. While he works through the limited young heterosexual female population of San Francisco that is willing to believe his tales.
I've been assuming we'd share the care. And he knows it.
This afternoon, instead of taking the Van Ness and my connector home, I rode it south and connected to the Market. I got off somewhere in the Haight and went looking for some restaurant more wine than food.
It was predestined. "Hamburger Mary's" the sign said, and it was only a block from the Market cable car.
When had I last been subjected to a real Indiana Hamburger with cheese, tomatoes, endive, sweet sauce and onions? Vegetarians must swoon when they get within a mile of this place. MaMa would approve, I thought. Then I thought how Phoebe would disapprove. That made up my mind. Time for some meat in my tummy.
It was surprising to discover Mary had a wine cellar and a full bar, as if I'd ordered this place created just for me. Not to mention it had other meat items like pork chops, standing rib, planked whitefish, glistening German Duck and sirloin steaks. Replicated they might be, but I stood and sniffed for three or four minutes once I'd entered. I think Lucas started kicking out of sheer joy of the smell.
Kathryn Janeway's Sin. She'll eat meat. And if it's replicated, that's all the better.
In fact, it was. Fuck Mark. I had a New York Strip with high-cholesterol mushrooms and gravy. Like all restaurants, they refine and alter their standard replicator formula until each one has 'their' own special pattern. The Strip steak was utterly gorgeous, crisp without being overdone, and a reddish line in the center.
To my surprise a bulky woman took me out to a tiny three-table balcony patio. It had a glazed ceramic wall separating me from the people walking by. There, the bulky woman introduced herself as Mary: She owned this place.
She had spotted me as a new customer, and sought to help me enjoy myself. Also allowing herself to enjoy being the gracious host. She brought out a full bottle of something dark and red and Napa Valley, and sat opposite, helping me drink it.
I presumed she was probably a lesbian, but in San Francisco, that's two-thirds of the population. I expected her to roll on me, but she never did, and I was grateful for that. I had enough problems in my life with Mark, Kyle and Lucas.
We ate together, we talked, it developed she'd been an Asteroider. She'd made her big hit with a 900,000 Tonne 80% nickel-iron she found by herself, and guided in to the smelter satellites. Now she was a spacer who had really retired from those cold spaces between comforts and air. Here, her employees wandered by for instructions, and we got mildly hammered together.
She had one of her own double-decker hamburgers, of which I had some, and she ate a bit of my steak. I don't even remember going to sleep.
There was an incredibly holed, aged, and large gray real-wool blanket over me when I awoke, and the smell of burnt meat came to me again.
You could see a few stars overhead, you could hear the occasional flitter or air-effect truck, you hear the patterns of people in the night. I was outside. I was on that little patio. It had a little padded bench behind me, and that was where I was.
I bundled up the blanket, and went inside. Mary was at the Bar, evidently punching up the day's receipts. The clock said eleven o'clock. The place seemed closed.
"We only stay open later on the rest of the week. I have two early-close nights to let my girls have time at home," she said. I sat down in a padded Captain's Chair, placing the blanket on the bar.
Mary smiled at me and immediately placed a Comm near me. Mark answered on the first cheep, and he was irritated at me. Well, fuck him. I'd have bet he didn't come home until an hour ago himself. With his wiener small and tired.
We kept it on a civil level, and I told him I'd take a Cab home. What I didn't say was I'd take my own damned sweet time doing so. When I told him not to stay up, I think he got the message. I told him where I was, but he'd never heard of a place called "Hamburger Mary's" either.
When I got off the Comm, Mary poured a small clear tulip glass half full of what she was having. Almost black, slightly sweet, very chalky, she said it came from the old Bordeaux region in Old France. Mouton something, it had an incredible after-taste.
The door in back chimed and banged as it swung shut again. Presently an interesting woman appeared from the kitchen. Her straight black hair ran all the way down to her thighs, and she wore a pair of goggles on her forehead. Late thirties, no, forties, a touch plump, she smiled brightly at me as she approached.
"You the ride? I'm Tschierphone, here's my card. I'm a licensed Cabbie, and my flitter is out back. We'll go when you want." She laid down two immensely long loaves of bread in a long bag, and a little box, on the bartop. She then tore the end of one loaf off, stuffing incredibly aromatic chunks into her mouth. According to her card, Tschierphone was sister to Megara and Antigone.
Mary said the Megara was herself. She gave us both another two fingers of Bordeaux into our glasses. She took a piece of bread, then allowed me to rip some off as well. I didn't think I'd be hungry, but the smell of fresh bread does that to a person.
Tschierphone brought out a hot dish of garlic butter and we all did a little pigging. After that I finished my Bordeaux. Mary had a good dose of it. Tschierphone finished off the bottle by putting the end in her mouth and tilting it back.
Then we each finished off a stupendous cold little cannoli. There had been three in the box. Even Lucas must have been stuffed by the end of that. Yet I didn't feel sleepy this time.
Somewhere towards the end, I made noises about me being a pig and offering payment. Mary popped my filche in and out, and I noted the cost seemed low. Just for the meal earlier, she said.
Tschierphone said she would be in her flitter, getting a nap, just wake her when I was ready.
That left me and Mary. She began speaking before she finished her books.
"Do you ever think about how many Universes we each deal with? I've always felt that every move we made creates a new universe. You say no to a request, a universe splits off where you said yes. You've heard the theory before, yes?"
"Somewhere there is a world where I'm still back in Indiana, somewhere there is a galaxy where I'm captaining a Constellation-class warship in the war?" I asked.
I nodded my head at her, relishing the fact that I was feeling those great four percentage points one gets away from reality sometimes. You've had a little good wine, but not much, and you're feeling great without feeling the least bit giddy. I had no doubt I'd wake up tomorrow without a trace of a hangover or dirt road mouth.
"Have you ever thought of what you'd be, where you'd be, what you'd be doing, if you'd taken a different route?", she continued.
"Who hasn't? It's all a retreat, though, to think about it. You deny things, and things stop being your fault. Or maybe you lose yourself in dreams, and it doesn't hurt so much. It's always a retreat, a dodge to let you hide from yourself."
"And you don't retreat, do you, Little Katie? It's not in your nature."
"My father called me that. Little Katie. I don't think he ever thought of me as a full-sized Katie."
"But what say, what if you could pick a different present, or even future, what'd you choose? Would you still be married to Mark?"
"NEVER! NEVER!," I cried. That was so quick and so sharp it embarrassed me. Megara nodded her gray-haired head.
"Lucas?"
Silence while my head whirled. Right now?, I thought. Right now I'd have a life without Lucas .... except the guilt I'd feel.
"I don't .... I'll pass on that one." Megara finished her accounts, closed down her board, and looked up at me, smiling.
"Well, tomorrow is the future. Would you like to enter tomorrow? A future can be .... interesting. A present may be even more so. Well, enough, let us go. This way, then. Your Present and your Future and your Flitter awaits."
We went through the kitchens, the food smells muted by now. Heels clicking on the tiles, me regretting the home I went towards. We stepped onto a foyer, where Megara promptly sat upon a red Captain's Chair. In another stool sat a very young blond.
There was a long room here, in back. The rear a little murky, unclear, the ceiling the only low light source. Oddest thing, the blond sat before a hand loom, a genuine antique-style hand loom.
"Hi," she said, she had such a chiming musical voice. "I'm Antigone, I'm the third sister. I'm young - do you think I'm pretty?"
She was indeed, even dressed in today's mod fashion. Tight embroidered pants, with blinking lights flashing from a line on the side, from waist to ankle. White embroidered fine cloth serape, a piece of cloth with a hole for the head. White half-boots with lights flashing on the side. All ultra modern, all very garish, all flash and no substance, in my judgment.
The girl was extraordinary, though. She was pure untrammeled innocence, her smile absolute confidence, her eyes sparkling routes to a trusting personality. I felt like adopting her or inviting her to a sleep-over with four or five other female friends and acquaintances.
"That is good. You think I'm pretty. I like that." She turned back to her loom, kicking her bars to tighten the weave. I felt a small tremor, making me flinch. The inevitable reminder to us all of what plate tectonics meant. A touch only, a mere tremor, and it did not repeat.
"Humor me, please, Captain," she said. "Think of what you want your life to be, tonight, when you go home."
The door was on auto, flashing open for me. Megara said: "There's a low kerb here. Be careful where you step."
The flitter was just opposite, A head of black hair framing the woman calmly waiting for me. For the first time I noticed the street was cobbled with Belgian blocks. When I stepped on one, I heard a sharp loud noise behind me.
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - -
"Thirty percent life support, Captain! The hull has been breached on decks five through nine, impulse power only, shields inoperative! We have no shields! I repeat, we have no shields!"
"Photon torpedoes? Phasers?"
"Just six proximity mines."
"On my order," I stated. Lieutenant Rioppa gazed at me from the helm with his black eyes, his smile getting bigger in his dark brown face.
Lieutenant Wescheen looked at me from Ops, his fear threatening to take over his body. Ensign Domiquez and we three were the last of the Alpha Bridge crew. She was saying her rosary.
With periodic displays of darkness on the screen, we watched the three Cardassian warships come closer. They each fired again, and we felt the fire lance into the bowels of our ship. We were dying, and quickly. "Three seconds before they can fire again," he commented. "Range now 9000 ... 8000 ... 7000. Their weapons are about to ..."
"Launch mines!" I said.
They hit us again and the bridge collapsed in a mass of sparks and smoke and falling pieces of ship. On the screen I watched one - two of the mines start a fiery collapse in one of the enemy vessels. Rioppa saw it also. Then the screen went out and we had no lights.
There were, however, cascades of sparks, and fire. I was pinned and could do nothing more. Rioppa was opened up, a moving dead man, but he only had to crawl a few paces. He touched my hand and said: "Good show, Captain."
Then I felt the air leaving my lungs. Hull breach. I didn't think it could hurt so much when my lungs boiled dry.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Megara was there to catch me before I collapsed. We stood there, outside the back door of her restaurant, in a quiet night and stars faintly seen through the city-glow. My lungs HURT so very much. Yet blood did not come up on my hands when I coughed, and my skin was untouched.
"Easy," Megara whispered, "it'll be all right in a second. Stay calm, that one must have been rough, na?"
The blond had wheeled her loom until it and she blocked the doorway. She ran the bobbin across, it's little noises fascinating me. "That was only one choice, Kathryn Janeway. You want to command a ship in war. There is sometimes that price."
I recognized Antigone's next move. It would be to run the foot pedals to tighten the cloth. "Let us see another future, or something from the present."
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
My Giorgio was sweaty and filthy, and the open covered work area was smelling of hot compoloidals, silgrease, and the remains of thousands of insectoids. The boys were already in the flitter, so I couldn't stay long. Puberty is such a trouble.
My husband smiled up at me, telling me to give his regards to "Granny" Gretchen. He should be done repairing these robot Bugcatchers in a few hours. Meaning half the night. As usual they had malf'ed in the picker arms. You pick thousands of bugs off plants in a day and see if YOUR arms don't malf.
I told him there was food in the Box, Evassberries in the lower shelf. He accepted a quick kiss, and I had the flitter airborne in minutes.
This year we had 800 hectacres in tomatoes, so our fleet of Bug-catcher machines were in constant use now, fighting tomato Greenworms and Goldthorax. Each catcher was averaging 300 Kilos of bugs per week, so we were drawing ahead of this years infestation. The pulped varmits made damned good soil mix for the winter grains, as well.
We stopped and hovered over our melon field for a minute, while Pollox picked two honeydews and a cantaloupe for Gramma.
Granny -- it was still hard to think of my mother as such even now -- whooped to welcome the twins. Castor immediately tried to sneak off to the Box and see what there was in pies, and Pollox asked about Phoebe. I ached for the day when Pollox would leave for StarFleet, I knew he would, the day would come.
Gretchen had some cornbread with her patented chicken'n'gravy, and potato salad. After everyone had a big dish of apple cobbler, we retired to the front parlor for Phoebe's letter.
She was the First on the HERMES now, given a pip and Lieutenant Commanders rank. Swuychski had been given an unidentified vessel of his own, and everyone went up in position and rank. Phoebe figured she'd get her own ship soon, maybe one of the big ones. They needed experienced commanding officers most of all in this war.
She included a few Holo's of her and members of the ship. Captain Subidayadda had taken the HERMES through numerous encounters with the Dominion already, but I wondered if his eyes showed his fears and doubts.
Phoebe didn't show hers, but I know she had them. Soon she'd have her own ship. Daddy would have been proud of her.
I wondered who in those Holo's might be her lover? Male, or...
Later that night I was looking out over what was once MY tiny wooden balcony. Mother was in her bed, and the boys asleep in what used to be Phoebe's room. If they didn't have the Holo on, playing games. I wondered if Daddy would have been proud of me?
I squelched that thought quickly. Was I proud of me?
I was just another Indiana farm wife, end of story. And a repressed one as well.
In the closet I brought a chair to stand on. I faced the door and carefully pried out the board above the lintel with my fingers. In the space to one side I retrieved my precious cargo, my soft brown leather protector pouch.
Naked in bed, fondling my two Risan dildo's, I licked the knobbed one's length. Lavender, human dimensions, I activated the squirming action. I fingered myself, until I could slide it inside me.
Self-loving was all the loving I had enjoyed for a decade and a half. My hand worked faster and faster, my breath husked, my eyes gave me images behind my closed lids.
My dream lover. Soft curves, spare frame, smooth skin, giving, squirming as I chewed on her nipples.
"Oh Phoebe," I gasped. "We could have been happy here. Why did you have to go away?"
- - - - - - - - - - -
Again Megara was there for me, propping me upright before I could even stagger.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?" I screamed, ineffectually fighting her support.
"We are sometimes called the kindly ones," Megara said.
"Sometimes we are called the furies. Better for you to see us as the furies than the kindly ones," Tschierphone said from the open window of her Flitter cab.
"Mostly we are the weavers," the blond Antigone chimed. "We make a weave and that is the person."
"We can cut the thread short, or cut it long," Megara soothed.
"But always we weave," Tschierphone smiled.
"We never stop weaving, we never stop cutting the ends of threads," blond Antigone told me.
"Tonight we are to start a new weave, build a new tapestry, create a new beauty and a new mystery on the loom," Megara said.
"Tonight you can tell us what is the image you wish your life to be. Choose, mortal woman," Tschierphone stated, "and you have your image."
"We shall present you with a few of your options, and you may direct them to your ultimate acceptance," Antigone coaxed. She tossed a bobbin down the loom, and I saw her feet flex to move.
"NO!!!"
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
The Camp Commandant probably thought he was being lenient. All we had to do was sexually drain the Camp guards gonads, or whatever it was they called them. Goddamned males, always the same thing. Then we were given things like extra food and additional blankets. Damned thin blankets.
Fuck the Jem'Hadar. I had to smile to think that wasn't a curse here. It was an everyday reality. Fuck the Cardassians as well.
Unfortunately they'd never heard of doing things in rotation. It was always the same ones who got volunteered.
It means nothing. It's not even sex, really. It's just some pa'tak using my flesh. My flesh endures. My soul endures. My mind endures. I endure. Fuck the Jem'Hadar, and this time I DO mean it as a curse.
The Cardassians always did use other races as "comfort girls". End of story. The Jem'Hadar here see no reason not to emulate the Cardassians. End of story. Before here I hadn't even been sure Jem'Hadar were functional males.
Gul Mairis is a prime slime ball, though. We're all prisoners of war here, all four or five thousand of us. Thirty-one races and four sexes. Slime ball.
Personally I figure most of us are dead. If a peace comes, we'll be embarrassing truths they'd just as soon deny. Solution? No more embarrassing truths.
The dark-side to all that Dominion bullshit propaganda is that everyone else is disposable. Including their own flunkies and allies.
The Vulcan girl died this morning before she was called again. Gul Mairis didn't like that. He really enjoyed using one of those superior and haughty Vulcan gals, it had showed on him. It'll probably be afternoon before they take her body out.
Sometimes I wish I had the ability of the Vulcans. Dropped in an impossible situation, they can just lay down and die. Simply turn their heads off and slip into the darkness.
We were all talking about the expression on Gul Mairis' pudgy face when he re-visited his last Vulcan "girlfriend" this morning. The corpse had been smiling.
Leeta is crying again, and Mym Tiers is going comatose, I think. It's a political thing, I presume, the way the Cartesians prefer to use Bajoran women.
Damn! Now I'm seeing a squad of Jem'Hadar coming this way, with a few human women in tow. It inevitably reminded me of another group's sexual preferences. God knows why the Jem'Hadar like human women best. An honor I'd just as soon have declined.
I calmly exited when they opened the block door. Gray bastards. I wish I could have flicked my tongue over five or six dozen, like that Nimrod gal did. Reptilian racial base, not even I knew that their spit could be tailored to the DNA characteristics of a target racial group.
Five or six dozen. Even back in our Block we'd heard the cries of agony of our guards dissolving. Good girl.
As we all filed into one of the Jem'Hadar barracks, I began my Mantra of Denial.
It's not even sex. It's just like going to the dumper.
Really, I was looking forward to the meaty soup at the end. Maybe they'll throw in a few boiled potatoes again. I'd have preferred asparagus hollandaise with a nice Chablis, but the menu is so limited here.
- - - - - - - - - -
Tears were running down my cheeks, and I was glad I'd begun the day sans make-up.
"Wh - what are you doing to me?" I asked.
"We are giving you choices," Megara stated. "Somewhere in these experiences you will find the life you need to live, the love you need to find. Perhaps. Even the Furies do not know."
"Please, please, help me, please stop this, I WANT TO GO BACK!!", I screamed. "Please....", I begged in a lower voice.
"We are the Furies," Tschierphone explained. "We have no pity. We are the Weavers of Lives, Kathryn Janeway. We will not be swayed. We must weave, and at this moment we weave you."
"We are the Furies, Kathryn Janeway," blond Antigone laughed. "We weave now and give you a great opportunity. Accept the pain. Pain passes."
She threw the bobbin through the loom, and then threw the bobbin to me. I caught it with one hand, my instincts remembering those summers of softball in Indiana. It was eight, eight hundred colors, no colors at all, I held it before my eyes and the universe raced away.
"Dream a dream, Kathryn Janeway, dream a dream. Dance the weaving dance with me, Kathryn Janeway, help pave the weave.
"Dream."
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
A blissful moment with a close one, what more could a person want out of life?
We were on a ridge line, we were far above a long lake slinking through the hills for many kilometers. Morning had already begun over our backs, and dew was heavy on the thousands of tiny bluish flowers arching out of their nests. They smelled lovingly minty. The blankets smelled of wet wool. The flowers tasted acrid, but had such a glorious scent. The downslope was covered with them, and their purplish cousins. All that mint wafting gently into my face.
I rolled onto my back, letting Chakotay pin me to the ground with his bulk and weight. He idly nibbled on one nipple, but I shook my head at him.
"It's been fun," I commented, "but we've got to get back to our vessels. They'll be needing us. Or they'd BETTER be needing us, me, or someone is going to catch hell for too much efficiency."
"My ship can't function without my presence," he smiled.
"Of course. Who ever heard of a ship in tip-top shape without the Captain there, cracking the whip? Goes against the laws of physics," I returned.
We sat up, beginning the investiture of our command personas. One kiss, two, then we were Captains again.
Chakotay ran his hands through my reddish hair, lingering on the line of my neck. "I'll never forgive you for stealing B'Elanna Torres from me," he said.
"I needed an engineer," I explained.
"And?" he teased.
"You knew I was bi when we met," I commented. "Do you want to change the ground rules now?"
"No, my Captain."
"Then all is well, my Captain."
::cheedik::cheedik::
"Janeway here," I tapped my Maquis badge. I had to smile to think the Risans sold us unique communicators of better quality than the ones StarFleet presently wore, and cheaper. All that experience in sub-micro-miniaturization when they made those inventive and amazing dildoes was so very useful.
"Signals here ... might be Cardassian incoming."
Chakotay touched my shoulder, and we shared a kiss for just an instant.
"One to beam up," he told his ship. I waited a second, then told my Maquis ship the same thing. It was sooo sad, really. Neither one of us will probably ever have a moment like that again. We might never meet again.
You lose a lot of ships running a guerrilla war against a ruthless and relentless bunch of bastards like the Cardassians. But then, they have their own losses as well, thanks to us.
B'Elanna was waiting for me as I re-materialized. "Captain," she began, "we still don't have full shields, so we'd better figure on hit-and-run if we have to. Oh, and I love you," she said before she kissed me. Such a strong lover, accepting my men like she does.
"I love you too," patting her on her butt, and kissing her again. "I presume this means we have full drive back?"
"Ready when you are, Captain."
"Then let's get this mother in gear, and prepare for some rock and roll music." I slid into my Helm seat, at the front. The Captain is always the first to arrive at an accident or a battle.
This year's beat by the Twonkies was fed into the cabin by the computer, and we prepared to warp out. After a few minutes of listening, B'Elanna had a habit of nodding her head to the rhythm of the band. She was so beautiful in profile.
I loved this moment. B'Elanna watched me point a finger forward and say: "Engage!"
- - - - - - - - - - -
Megara was behind me, her hands supported me until I could re-orient myself. If I looked as bad as I felt, I was looking pretty goddamned bad. My hands were shaking and the bobbin was gone. I looked to Antigone, she had it, it was a pulse of light as it passed through the loom.
I suddenly realized I was halfway between the loom of Antigone and Tschierphone calmly sitting in her Flitter. There was a dimension of physical movement in my night.
"Why do you do this to me?" I asked.
"No fair telling," Megara smiled. "The Furies are inscrutable, didn't you know? We can only weave, when we are the furies."
"We weave," Tashierphone reminded me. "Even we do not know what the final tapestry will be."
"We weave," Antigone chuckled. "We do not select the design. We only know when we are to cut the thread. At that moment the tapestry is complete."
"Two threads tied together might be all there is of the ekele of a new-born babe," Megara explained. "when that new babe dies at birth."
"Or a grandiose wall-covering, replete with many decades of events. We weave and always know when to cut the thread," Tschierphone smiled at me.
"We weave, tonight. I cut the threads, when it is needful, I do that thing. But tonight we weave," Antigone coaxed. "Take another step for us, Katie, give us another thread to weave with."
I turned to Tschierphone and moved my foot.
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
All four remaining Jem'Hadar vessels were closing fast.
Carey piped in from Engineering. "Forty percent power and maintaining warp four, max, at this moment," he offered.
"Full power? Full shields?" I asked.
"Working on it," he said. "This is only a small miracle, compared to those I've performed, but I'll still need time." A pause. "And calling me Scotty won't reduce the time needed to do the job by more than fifteen seconds."
"VOYAGER is a good ship, Captain," Gomez volunteered from Science station. Meaning it'll give me more than I asked for. Coming from the ENTERPRISE like she does, I'll consider that high praise. Tomorrow. I'm busy right now.
"Any reading from the IRRAWADDY and EUPHRATES?" I asked.
"Too far away to assist us," Annika stated from Comm. Tall and pretty blond girl there, the new girl. I am .... She is so attractive, during last night's VeloCity match, there was that moment we were tumbled with her on top.....
I am straight arrow. I don't desire my Comm officer. And If wishes were horses......
Flip a coin, came to my mind.
"Mister Kim," I asked my helmsman, "could you flip this ship?"
He answered yes, so I asked: "Could you accurately predict when in the arc we could re-apply thrust so as to stop us, or at least slow us?"
Again an affirmative. "Could you fire all phasers and photon torpedoes during the arc? Accurately enough to hit what we fire at?" Again a yes. Immelmann rides again.
"All Hands!" I warned. "Everyone grab hold of something. It's going to be a wild and bumpy ride for the next few minutes!"
Kim had already made computer run the program and affirm self-correcting protocols. Good boy. If we survive this, I'll tell him to try inviting BOTH of the Delaney sisters out on a date. They have such interesting protocols on one of their double dates, or so I hear. And give Harry the Holodeck time for the date.
"ENGAGE!" I yelled. God, I loved moments like this.
By the time we'd slowed, the Jem'Hadar, not being fools, were splitting into a four-ship dispersal. Just a little too late.
Two were still in effective range when the photon torpedoes hit. The phasers were wasted on the one, it was already turning red with internal explosions. For the other we looped back, then finished her off. The last two knew the better part of valor and headed out towards safety and home.
"VOYAGER has done it again," I stated to the crew. "We played two to nothing, and the other guy left the planche." They loved it when I threw in words from dueling.
The department heads all reported in, no casualties, and all would soon reach one hundred percent capability. The HoloDecks will be booked 100% tonight, as well. I realized I would probably be celebrating alone again, tonight. Maybe I'll contribute some replicated wine to the Mess this next mealtime. Leave some for Beta and Gamma shift.
I wished I was having a nice cozy wine dinner with someone.
That Annika is such a doll...
I am Captain. That means I don't take anyone from my crew to bed. Certainly not a woman. Christ on a stick, wouldn't THAT put finis to my career!
"Mister Kim," I said when I had my Command Mask back on. "Lay in a course to bring us back to the IRRAWADDY and the EUPHRATES. And wipe that superior smirk off your face."
"Aye, aye, Captain." He almost got all of the smirk off.
- - - - - - - - - -
"What am I doing?", I asked in a trembling voice. "Are these dreams my dreams? Or are they real? Are these futures I WANT??"
"You dream your own dreams, Kathryn Janeway," Megara answered.
"We are but weavers, Kathryn Janeway," Tschierphone explained.
"Take another step into your weave, tell us what you want, we are but weavers," Antigone smiled.
"And if I don't know what I want? What then?" I asked.
"The pattern shall be woven in any event," Megara said.
"We give you a rarity," Tschierphone stated.
"So choose, Kathryn Janeway, find your future. We have no pity," blond Antigone reminded. "You may not much enjoy the weave we build for you out of this night."
I turned to face Tschierphone, my heart in my throat, and took another step onto another Belgian block stone.
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - -
Outside the windows there yet existed the lines of Starbow. All was as before, VOYAGER still crawled towards home. That was both assuring and irritating. And depressing, definitely depressing.
Somewhere back there, in the Alpha Quadrant, my future was disappearing. I knew exactly what I had needed to climb the Command ladder. I had been going places.
Now I was traversing meaningless places.
Not for the first time I regretted my decision that left us here in the Delta Quadrant. Yet it was the correct decision. If ever I get back they'll probable laugh, and pat me on the back, and smile at my adventures. Then court-martial me.
Then court-martial the Maquis members of my crew.
In the meantime I idly count the Starbow. And play other games.
At least the food was good. What would I have ever done without Bashir and Garak being accidentally on my ship when we had to pull out? And who would have ever thought the Cardassian spy could be such a good cook?
Personally I think he'll NEVER be able to make a cook out of that Neelix character. Neelix could get water hot, and he was a wonderful guide, charming sort of fellow, if rather than nervous, unsure and evasive. Quite skilled at being a diplomat. But as for being a cook....
If it wasn't for Kes loving him, I swear he'd have been spaced by now.
My lover of the month returned to my bedchamber. I felt him near me, I enjoyed the way he kissed my shoulder, and turned me for a more lovely kiss. Bastard! Now he was rolling my nipples again!
"Dear Doctor Mine," I whispered, "Why don't you get your bony ass on home, and enjoy the sleep of the truly sinful? If you have a good sleep, maybe Garak will have those wonderful Strawberry Waffles again. Or Evassberry toast. Or Bread Pudding and Plums. Or a Klingon Tarq omelet. or...."
"You are an insidious woman, Kathryn Janeway. You've got me thinking of food instead of love and lust."
We both knew he'd just as soon be back in Garak's bed, but that was what civility was. We avoid giving pain to another unless there was a reason for it. Still, I dearly loved the soothing oily way his words had of relaxing my nerves.
So for the moment he graced my bed .... periodically. Every night this week. Still, he was the perfect lover. His was a mouth that did not speak or spread gossip, and a lover who was ... genuinely and surprisingly exhilarating, in the physical sense. He's perfect for a purely-physical liaison.
I pointedly didn't turn when he left my cabin. I was lost in my Starbow and in the thoughts that came to me unwanted. Samantha, earth mother. The Delaney girls, all hedonistic intent. And B'Elanna.
She'd caught me looking again, down in Engineering. She blushed a little, then deliberately allowed herself to be untouched by my regard, being as natural as she could be. She liked my looking, I know she did, but looking was the only thing I could do.
Even if B'Elanna allowed me ... If we DID, what then? Part of my Captain's authority would vanish, and could we afford games when we had so far to travel to reach home?
If we ever do. And I could kiss my career good-bye, if I showed up with a wife in tow. StarFleet preaches a good sermon, but me and every other officer in it knows it frowns on same-sex alliances. A little passing flirtation is no problem. But if you engage in a serious long-term one, you can find yourself the oldest Ensign in your graduating class thirty-five years from now. Or a sixty-five-year-old Lieutenant in charge of personnel on StarBase 24.
Still .... I could admit to myself now that I wanted to hold that tight sexy soft hard female body to my own.
I returned to my bed, still thinking of B'Elanna Torres. A little Euglis hand cream, and my eyes closed and my mind feasted on thoughts of my Engineering officer.
What the hell all did a pair of women DO? Well, there was that thing, and she must kiss a dream, and fingers I guess.... Then I froze at the thought of her wearing one of those self-seating dildoe's like I'd heard about.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I was still crying, the pains of loss and gain in these dreams. Megara stood ready to catch me if I fell.
"We are glad you are understanding, Kathryn Janeway, we are glad you are willing to go on," Megara urged.
"You now know much about what you can accept and what you truly want," Tschierphone said. "I can feel this new tapestry tugging at my hands, Kathryn Janeway, can you feel the tug?"
Antigone was laughing in the starry night of modern San Francisco. The blond clapped her hands in joy. "Oh, this is going to be a superior weave we make tonight! Come, Kathryn Janeway, take a step, give me a new strand in the weave!"
Her fingers moved, and the starry bobbin flew across the cloth in her loom. Her feet moved then, and so did mine.
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Chakotay was gone. His pride would keep him away, unless I abjectly apologized to him.
But he was WRONG, Dammit! And I'm the Captain. How could I dare to go back to him as he wanted me to do? He'd have become Captain at that moment, in fact, if not in name.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
"Mister Paris," I knew my voice was cold. "I do believe you are OUT of order!"
It's hard as hell to slip into a cold Command Mask when you're standing in front of someone naked as hell, but I think I managed it.
Tom stared at me for a minute, then finished putting his tunic on.
"Very well, Captain," he agreed, "I am out of order." He waited for another minute, then asked in a cold voice: "Aye, aye, Sir. Request permission to leave, Captain."
"Granted."
He spun and left, leaving me with nothing but an empty feeling in my stomach.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
It was just like yet another turbo-lift joke.
Lieutenant Torres and I were alone on the lift, both of us heading for Engineering. It was a nice quiet day, my nerves were chiming from too much bad coffee, and at that moment B'Elanna calls for the turbo-lift to halt.
Before I know it she has me pressed against the wall, hands on either side of me, and looking me in the face. Millimeters away.
"Oh hell," she growled. "I'm going to have to take the first step, aren't I?" Then she kissed me. For long minutes, letting me taste the lip gloss she wore, and the too-sweet flower scent of her soap, in her hair.
Then B'Elanna backed off a hair, letting me catch my breath. "Well, what is it to be?" she asked. "Do I do hard time in the brig, or would you like to have dinner with me in my cabin tonight?
"1730 Zulu. Dress informal ... and bring an appetite. I will."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
She mesmerizes me, she enriches my thoughts, am I falling in love with a woman? It's still hard to think of Seven of Nine as a woman. Those visible implants, her attitude, so superior and precise. She is still Borg at the same time I can see humanity infecting her, being her future, yet always modified by what she is and what she has been.
Has it only been three months since the RAVEN episode? Has it only been three months where I held her and kissed her in DaVinci's Studio?
So calm she is, so unapproachable, such a mountain of coldness at times. The Borg Queen, they say, trying to reduce Annika Hansen to understandable things. The Ice Queen, they say, and you hear the wish that they could approach her.
So un-human the cold green light is, here in Number Two Cargo Bay. So dead she appears. But I remember the way she moves, the preciseness of her voice, her lips when she speaks.
I lean forward to kiss her sleeping mouth, I feel like the Prince when he comes to waken Snow White. Her mouth is warm, not cold, she tastes sweet in my mind, she tastes living on my tongue. I so enjoy these morning kisses, and wish we were lovers.
Annika places her hand behind my head, encouraging me to continue the kiss. She twists her head a little, opening her mouth, searching for my own lips with her tongue and lips. Pressing harder, more insistently.
"Annika?" I whisper, trying to make sense of what we were doing.
"I am here, Kathryn Janeway. Do you want to stop kissing? I do not want to stop kissing you. You are acceptable...." Both hands find the shape of my head, my hair, the sensitive areas around my ears, the small of my back, the side of my neck.
"Please say you wish to continue this 'kissing', Kathryn. I will be very disturbed if we do not continue."
Pause. "Is it now that I should ask you out for a date?"
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Tuvok was on his side, being irritatingly calm as usual. I scrunched over to where our heads were together.
"I am quite serious, Mister Impeccable Vulcan. It looks like we shall be out here in the Delta Quadrant for years. As such seems to be our fate, it behooves me as Captain to prepare somehow for your Pon Farr, your season of blood fever. I need to know the probable dates, dammit!"
There. I've asked him to violate his damned ultra-sensitive reserve about his internal clock of sexuality. He might get unhappy, he might become enraged. But I've got to know.
He just moved that eyebrow. I know that eyebrow. He's got something to tell me that I'm not going to want or expect.
"Kathryn," he began. "How long have we been what you humans term "lovers"? Four months, na?" I nodded a yes.
"During that time, would you have described our relationship as passionate and satisfying?"
"Oh god yes, Tuvok," I agreed. "Every night, every damned night, you seem utterly inexhaustible, you Vulcan sonofabitch, you." I had to snuggle and hug for a few minutes. That eyebrow twitched again.
"On Vulcan outsiders rarely notice whether a couple is being blessed or cursed with the plak-tow. That is because as the internal pressures build, they are drained off in gratifying physical release.
"We are, simply stated, more affectionate more often for a period of months."
I was sitting up now, hands on my hips, a Katie-Me-Darling look on my face. Even Tuvok knew where that look was leading up to.
"You mean, you devious scalawag of a Vulcan, you mean what I've been doing for four months was scratching your damned blood-fever Pon-Farr urge to screw the mind out of some handy female? Or would that be randy?"
"In your case," Tuvok commented, "the appropriate phrase should be insatiable."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"Katie my dear, you are my heart," B'Elanna said. She sat lotus on the couch by me, close enough to kiss. But we did not.
"I love you deeply, I want you to be the love for life," she continued. I was crying and I could not stop.
"You must choose, Captain Kathryn Janeway. You love me, and I think you truly love both myself and Seven of Nine. Annika.
"But I was never born to be a member of a harem, and I've not learned how in the meantime," she growled. "It's up to you. Choose. Me or that blond. Choose."
- - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I watch the Starbow effect slide the stars past us, and I am so very chilled by the sight. Even now, when things seem to be going well, I am so very, very chilled by the distance we still have yet to go. Home becomes unreal when it is so far away. It acquires the stuff of fantasy in our mind, whimsy, warlock wishes.
I miss it all. Phoebe and MaMa, snowballs and icicles dripping down the side of a building.
A quiet moment on the side of the Main Quadrangle in StarFleet Academy. Sitting under a tree and feeling small pebbles under my backside, feeling the brush of tiny flying things fighting the morning breeze.
Lying in the thick grass on a cliffhead, watching a few seals in the surf frolic and feed on fish. Smelling the bitter tang of the sea. Feeling cold as the air currents bring a chilling breeze.
My hand in a mountain stream, my fingers now knowing the currents and the pressures of water. Waiting for that lovely large brown trout to drift close enough for me to caress it.
A hand rubs my shoulder, I hear the faint breathing behind me, I close my eyes for the kiss on my ear.
"Forget the past, Kathryn, leave go. We have only the future."
My beautiful Borg enfolds me, and I can go on.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am freezing, I must have a dozen cuts, superficial for the most part, though the forehead one keeps botching my visual system.
"Are you functional, Captain?"
How can it be? It is Annika! Oh let this be true and not a fantasy!
"Where are your clothes, Kathryn?"
"Taken by the damned Oburite of this damned planet, the damned treacherous damned bastard, that's where they damned well went." She leaned forward and instinctively I twisted to kiss her.
"Are you still functional, Captain darling?"
"Yes, yes, just get me out of here. Damned treacherous bastard decided to accelerate the negotiating process a little. I decide to negotiate in a way he wants, or I might not survive my next encounter with his associates."
"What exactly is ... this?" Annika asked. Waving a hand - ah, what a very human gesture. You're coming along so very well, wife of mine.
"Teams of men armed with knives search for me in this big damned palace. They know the place and I don't. They count coup by slicing the victim on the run, until the victim looks very, very bad. Or that person changes their mind about whatever it is that the Oburite wants.
"A very effective negotiating tactic if the damned Oburite can get his damned hands on the poor damned negotiator."
Annika looked at my broken hand, shaking her head in another wonderfully human gesture. My precious damned stubborn Borg.
"I gather these teams have not gotten away unscathed?"
"Not from Katie-Me-Darling they haven't. And why aren't we both already transported away? Where's my ship?"
"They injected you with a transport inhibitor - here, swallow this," giving me an oversized oral med, to look at it.
"They'll be able to lock on this. VOYAGER is presently suppressing the armored orbital defense fortresses, even as we speak. We do believe this may be done without terminating the lives of the WarSat personnel.
"Mr.. Chakotay did not sound regretful if some died." Annika did not sound as though she regretted his attitude.
"We will beam out as soon as they return. We have only to await removal."
Upon my observing more knife-wielding Nobles approaching from each corridor, I drew Annika's attention to them. I hated the way these painted dandies of men smiled at us over their knives. They'd done this before, and liked it.
"I hope to hell you have some method of defense included in that big jacket you're wearing."
Annika leaned forward to kiss me, and even in my state it felt good to return the kiss. When we get back to our cabin, THEN you will see a return kiss, Annika-Me-Darling. "Nice to see you," I said. "I love you."
"I shall have words for you concerning taking unnecessary risks, Captain. When we are in our cabin tonight." I recognize that eyebrow. I'm going to get a good one tonight.
Annika touched my hair, smiling. "Kathryn Janeway. I love you."
Her attitude became different in only a few nanoseconds. "In the meantime I intend to safeguard you."
Four long gleaming tubules suddenly sprung from her Borg fist. The long surgically sharp curving edges gleamed even in this subdued lighting.
"It appears these people like to play with knives. Very good, now let us see how they play the game. I am presently accessing one hundred and fifty-five different ways of knife-fighting."
Opposite us in either direction a group of several creatures came closer. They outnumbered us by four to one and they had knives. I had Annika Hansen, ex-Borg.
No contest.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Always I return to the Starbow outside my cabin window. It is so cold, so mocking, so far away. Home is not a place, but a distance.
Annika hugged me to her, then her hands began to tweak my nipples. A hand twined down my belly.
"Come to bed, sweet wife of mine. Come to bed with me. This is our home. No other exists."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I am beside the flitter, I have traversed the long way from Restaurant back door to here. Megara is beside me, hands on her hips. Tschierphone keys the passenger door open. Back at the rear door, it appears that the loom is gone. Antigone sits on a stool and grins at me.
I look around, seeing the dim stars overhead. A few passing vehicles somewhere, a few flitters, silence of midnight.
I look down and pat my son in my belly. I easily slide into the flitter passenger seat. Tschierphone tells me she'll take me home. She does not say where home is.
Suddenly the light becomes overpowering as I feel the flitter leave the ground.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Already the pain is beginning to fade. I wondered how women coped in older, more barbaric days? Barely, probably.
The grav chair slipped effortlessly down the corridor, only a hint of whisper proclaiming the quiet use of power. Annika guided it, and I gloried in the babying of me that all this implied. It felt damned good to be treated like a fragile porcelain doll, I had to admit. We must declare a "Be-Good-To-The-Captain Day" somewhere in our lengthening list of holidays to be commemorated.
My baby was wriggling about now, probably wanting to drink some breakfast. Or already wanting to evacuate what he had. The first few years with him should be a real circus. To me he looked like he had a halo around his head.
He became increasingly distressed, but I figured he could hold until we got home. Then I looked at that perfect little face.
Let everyone look. In a minute my baby was nursing at my breast, and I was smiling. Despite a good deal of trepidation, I have to admit. Four milk teeth? Sure enough, I winced as he began chewing at the same time he suckled.
Just another demanding male.
Once in our cabin, Annika patiently waited by me until our baby had finished snack. Then she brought a changing table out of nowhere, and proceeded to take care of the other end of the biosystem.
I watched for a minute, amazed at her speed and efficiency. Then I turned to look out at the passing Starbow. Perhaps they didn't appear so demanding and distant now.
I turned to Annika's kiss, instinct telling me what she wanted. She laid her blond head on my shoulder, both hands holding our son.
"So tell me, Annika, how does it feel to be a mother?"
"This is acceptable," she dryly stated. "Did you know I already search for my features, or yours, in his face? That white fuzz he has will become my hair, I already know that. I think he already has that Katie-Me-Darling look of yours when he scrunches up his face. Your fists, my chin and cheek, and the Doctor said he'd be tall, didn't he?"
"Our overworked and under-appreciated EMH states he could generally indicate which traits come from which mother, but it is still uncertain how the total body will come out.
"He's really quite smug about pulling off a tissue-sample-and-ovum parthogenetic fertilization, you know," I added. "He'll tell us who he got the sex-determinate gene from, if we ask him."
"Please don't ask. As it is I love every male on this ship, because any one of them might have had a part in Lucas' creation."
She rocked a now-sleeping blond Lucas in her arms. She had immediately accepted my pregnancy, when I proposed it. With no uterus, thanks to the ever-efficient Borg, any baby we had together would have to be carried by me.
"Annika," I asked, "can I go to bed now? I'm tired."
**************
Four hours later I wakened, seeing Annika nurse our baby. From her winches, I presumed she also had discovered Lucas was a biter.
"Why Lucas?" she asked, staring at me. "Why that name?"
"To tell the truth, I couldn't really tell you why. It just felt right, somehow."
"Lucas it shall be then.
"Here, do you want him now?" Annika gently offered. Content flowed with my milk as Lucas suckled, with only one nip in the process. Annika rose, changed him, and returned to the bed.
"You're sure you don't mind being the wet nurse..."
"I am his mother. It is what should be. And this way, with my glands tricked into producing, I feel quite gleeful, happy, and I am not entirely sure why. Maybe I feel more his mother this way.
"In three weeks you should dry up, the Doctor said. It is necessary for the maintenance of the Command Protocols that the Captain not be seen having to stop for a baby at inconvenient times.
"You are quite sure this is necessary? Then that is acceptable." She hesitated, words almost coming forth, debating what to say.
I had to smile, then she returned it. Two minds running in the same set of tracks.
"May I?" I asked her. "Me first ... then would you suck on mine?"
Annika partially lifted one breast to me, watching me as I began to suck milk from her lovely breasts. Already my own breasts anticipated her mouth drawing milk from mine.
Outside the stars slid by, their rainbow lines warming me this perfect night. They weren't cold on this night.
I drank, understanding now that I was home, and home is where the heart is.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Klack, klack.
END